Divorce sucks. As a general rule, it is all around bad and should be avoided at all costs. I know what you’re thinking: “This guy, having been married only once and for only three years at that, is obviously an expert on this topic (yeah, right!).” I understand your skepticism; however, I speak to you not as a divorcee myself but as a child of divorce. Some of my earliest memories revolve around the concept of divorce. Seriously, a lot of my childhood is kind of a blank (maybe something to discuss at another time), but one of the first things that I remember clearly is my parents yelling at each other a lot, and shortly after that, my dad moving out. All this happened pre-kindergarten for me, so it shaped the landscape of pretty much my entire life. All these years later, I still don’t really know why they were fighting. Of course, they’ve both commented about how the other handled money or some irritating habits they had, but nothing seemed to justify such upheaval.
So, dad moved out and away. Far, far away. He moved back to his hometown, a three-hour drive from where I lived with my mom. At the time, that distance seemed infinite to me. Here’s where things really got good. From that moment on, any time I spent with mom, she was bad-mouthing dad, and anytime I spent with dad, he was bad-mouthing my mom. Honestly, it all made me not care for either one of them too much at the time but seeing as I spent most of my time with mom, guess who’s propaganda won out. You got it: I bought the crud that mommy dearest was slinging, and for several years, I really hated my dad and did a lot to avoid seeing him as much as possible.
My older brother, 15 at the time, was much smarter than me and so did not believe the lies, and he soon decided to move down south with Dad. A couple of weeks later, he died in a four-wheeler accident. He was riding down the dirt roads in the middle of nowhere and got run over by a transfer truck. It was a freak accident and nobody’s fault except maybe the driver’s. Yet my mother’s reaction to this was A: to shut down and be emotionally absent, and B: to use it as more propaganda against my dad. “He wasn’t watching him enough. He should never have let him on the four-wheeler. He should never have let him out of the yard.” Etc. Of course, I bought every word of it. I was a small child, so I believed every word that came out of mommy’s mouth. That was the final nail in the coffin for my relationship with dad. For years I hated him, and my mother was not present anymore either, not really. That left my little brother and me alone. I can’t speak for him but I felt abandoned. We couldn’t come together as a family to deal with this tragedy because they broke the family. Instead of having mom and dad together to be there for us, they left my brother and me to deal with everything on our own.
The real villain in all of this is divorce itself, that option to get out of the relationship when things get hard instead of working through it. My parents had been married for 20 years and had four children together. I know they loved each other at some point, yet after all that, they threw in the towel simply because they could. As I said earlier, neither of them has ever presented a valid reason that divorce was the only option. I am an adult now and have talked to both of them extensively about this over the years. There was not infidelity or abuse. Things got complicated and they took the out instead of working through it. In a moment, they destroyed 20 years of effort in building a life. Then did the world of four children split into two, damaging all the relationships involved.
There is a reason that wedding vows include the phrase “til death do us part.” There is a reason that when questioned about divorce, Jesus had this to say: “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Marriage should not be entered into lightly because it should not end. Divorce is catastrophically destructive to all involved. Don’t get me wrong; I understand that there are some circumstances where there are no other options. Namely, in the case of infidelity or abuse, these things could not have been foreseen and should not be tolerated. Otherwise marriage should last. There will always be struggles to go through and obstacles to overcome. In marriage, you will have a partner who is there for you through everything. When you marry someone, you should trust that they will always be there for you and you for them. This stands true even when the current issue stems from one of the spouses. Humans are imperfect and frequently in need of improvement. Your spouse should be your partner in that endeavor, never your adversary.
Let me get down off my soapbox. If you couldn’t tell this is something that I am very passionate about. I want to leave you with this. Children need both of their parents, and spouses need each other. In my case, God gave me a great father. Even though I hated him and often tried to avoid seeing him, he came to get us every other weekend (as often as the divorce agreement allowed) without fail for the entirety of my pre-adult life. That means dad drove the 3 hours to come to pick us up on a Friday, then drove with us 3 hours back to his house, only to turn around and do it the same thing to drop us off Sunday afternoon. He spent 12 hours on the road every two weeks to spend time with us. It took too many years for me to realize just how much big of a deal that was. I realized that my mom had been lying about him just because she was upset. That hurt my relationship with her, as I resented that she had caused me to waste precious time with my dad. I began to spend as much time as I could with him. I wouldn’t trade those three hour stretches on the road for anything. We would talk the whole time, about life, the world, how things work, jobs, etc. He taught me how to drive, going back and forth between the two houses. I was very blessed indeed. As much as I value that time that he made for my brother and me, I know that it would have been a thousand times better to have him living at home with us. It would have been better for him, and mom to work through the rough patches and stayed in a loving marriage. I can’t help but imagine how my life might have been different. I will do everything in my power to make my marriage last forever, and that no child has to experience what I did because of divorce.